4 Ways to Attack the Caro-Kann

I've been playing the caroan since I started playing chess and I'm prepared from for pretty much everything but there are four setups or four variations which scare me to my bone and today I'm going to show you the four variations now on on the right side of your screen you can see the difficulty uh that's my subjective opinion of how hard it is to actually play those variations out correctly and the lower the difficulty is the more you can prepare in advance and higher the difficulty is it will require tactical awareness and an immense amount of calculation so I'm going to show you four attacking setups for White against the caroan four variations which will give you great attacking positions and excellent prospects so let's get started the first one I called grishuk peace sacrifice because grishuk came up with this in 2016 in Rapid game against vidit and this one I have it PR prepared until we agree to a draw okay as black and as white but if I'm facing a low rated player I basically cannot risk going into this because I know the best I can get is a draw so we start by going uh into the caroan of course and then into the PA of and in the PA of caroan there's two ways to play for black black plays Knight F6 white plays Knight C3 and now black either plays E6 Knight C6 I have as black always played Knight C6 E6 is the main line by a very narrow margin but Knight C6 is also fine and now white has two choices Knight F3 or or uh Bishop G5 Knight F3 is the main move allowing the socalled pawn of end game the pawn of end game starts with this for forcing sequence Bishop G4 C D5 Knight D5 Queen B3 putting pressure on B7 black now takes on F3 G takes F3 E6 Queen takes on B7 and now Knight takes D4 white plays Bishop B5 check Knight takes B5 and queen C6 this is the start of the variation if you've ever played against the pawn of you've had this position and you've played at a Tempo just like your opponent in this position black plays King E7 I've had this in several tournament games I actually have great results with this the problem is that this is in fact a draw this is a draw end game with perfect play and that should go something like this queen takes B5 Queen D7 Knight D5 check Queen D5 Queen D5 e D5 and white has these doubled pawns black has a very bad Bishop a weak Pawn on A7 and an isolated Pawn on D5 it should be equal however but in 2016 Guk played a very strange move he played the move move Queen C5 now Queen C5 allows black to save a piece black can play Knight D6 simply being a piece up uh in the game vidit had actually uh declined the sacrifice he played King E8 and this is now a slightly worse version of the actual end game because of Queen B5 check Queen D7 and Knight takes D5 you cannot take with the queen uh or because the queen has pinned and if you take here then takes takes and obviously white white is a piece up so you have to go E5 and now white doesn't trade Queens this is how the game went and grishuk went on to win what we're interested in what if black tries to save a piece now I'm going to be perfectly honest I had this prepared when I faced it the first time as black I did play Knight D6 which is correct to save a piece it's supposed to be equal all zeros okay why takes on D5 I was facing a woman grandm Grand Master a woman International Master Anna ber from Croatia in the robots open 200 I believe 22 okay so our game went D5 uh castles uh and I went Queen C8 this is the best move for black and black is hoping to trade the Queens off and be a piece up white of course would like to decline that now if white makes a mistake black is going to win if black makes a mistake white is going to win the problem is black is the one risking white isn't risking anything white is a piece down but the position is so easy to play that it's very hard to make a mistake uh in this position Queen takes D5 of course declining the queen trade and queen to B7 now Queen E5 check white keeps declining and the idea beh behind this sacrifice is to keep the black king in the center to develop our pieces naturally the bishop comes to F4 or to G5 Rook comes to D E1 or E1 then the other R comes into play and the fact that we're down a knight is insignificant because these two pieces aren't participating now at this point after King D7 uh my opponent did something different from tier you can find the game in the road to GM series uh and ended up losing a position in which I was actually very close to winning anyway this is how this drawn end game should go Rook D1 Rook E8 Queen F5 check the Knight is pinned Rook E6 Queen takes F7 the Knight is pinned Bishop E7 Bishop G5 the bishop is spinned Rook E8 you have to save your bishop and now Rook takes D6 Rook takes D6 and Rook E1 and you cannot defend your Bishop Rook E6 loses The Rook so you have to go Queen D5 and the variation goes Rook E7 Rook E7 Queen E7 the king moves away and this is a draw by Perpetual check basically the queen ends up checking the king all the way to let's say A5 where the Rook cannot cover because of Bishop D d8 and so on and so on the game should end in a draw however it's very easy for black to go wrong after Queen C5 just like I did even though my opponent made a mistake and even though I knew about this sacrifice I was prepared I ended up losing the game that's the reason I think this grishuk peace sacrifice is extremely extremely fun to play and extremely scary for black to face I've given it four out of 10 for the difficulty because I think it's very easy for white to actually to actually play and prepare okay the second uh variation is if I'm going to be honest what I fear the most because I cannot avoid it and we're starting with the caroan of course the advanced variation and after Bishop F5 white goes for the bayonet now the bayonet attack I faced it once in a tournament game and I won but in my opponent's defense this is the only thing he plays I knew or I had a well there was a high chance he was going to play it again so I was well prepared and I've been preparing for hours and I knew the best engine lines like 10 15 moves deep so ended up outplaying my opponent in the opening I won a pawn and ended up converting uh there are a couple of ways to play this what white wants to do is white wants to voke a weakness or Force black into an inferior French defense so the most obvious move Bishop E4 uh leads to a position like this F3 Bishop to G6 and now E6 this is the main idea behind the bayonet you're trying to provoke a weakness of double death pawns so there are a couple of options black either plays Queen D6 which I think is best and after e F7 Bishop F7 Knight C3 White's position is very very Pleasant there is no F Pawn you're going to Castle Queen side you're going to go F4 so for example Knight D7 F4 E6 and these Bishops aren't active you have pushed your kingside pawns forward but that but that's fine uh alternatively on G4 if Bishop G6 then we switch to a normal Wonder real Attack sort of plan Knight E2 we want to go Knight F4 and use the fact that this bishop doesn't really have a square C5 should be the only move now H4 threatens to trap the bishop or almost trap the bishop E6 and now Knight F4 and this again should be pretty good for us if Bishop E4 we go F3 uh the bishop can no longer be saved and if the H pawn moves uh then we just take and induce a weakness again so Bishop G6 no good what I believe is the best move is what I ended up playing in my game the only time I actually faced the bayonet and that's the move Bishop D7 going into an infield Superior French now my opponent played Knight C3 and our game went like this E6 Bishop E3 preventing C5 but I played H5 that was taken and then C5 and you're basically giving up pawns on both sides of the board to get your knight to C6 to open up the position and you have ideas of Rook H5 and and and Rook E5 later on if this Pawn is taken this is what happened in our game now I'm going to show you a setup for white that's even more powerful instead of Knight C3 you go C4 and if this Pawn is ever taken and and it should be taken at some point this is a bad French where you don't have an easy C5 after C4 black really should go E6 that you have to save your Center and on Knight C3 let's say Knight E7 Knight F3 and C5 isn't easy to play because D5 is about to drop if black ever has to play e D5 then white is almost always better in the advanced carakan so if this bishop was on F5 or on G6 this would be fine in this case this is just a dreadful French DC4 is the best move and now the engine is going to tell you plus one for white and this is with almost perfect play after Bishop D7 uh for black if white chooses to go for this C4 line so the bayonet attack in my mind is something extremely scary for Aron players okay the two next sacrifices one of them is very short I faced it once and I ended up drawing the game even though uh well I I wouldn't say I was winning but I was better so we're in the fantasy caroan F3 and now I play Queen B6 but I used to play E6 which is the main move so E6 white continues Knight C3 Black Goes Bishop B4 and the main move here is Bishop F4 by far my opponent in that game that was played in the Silver Lake open in 200 20 or 19 he played Bishop D2 okay and everything I could see was okay Bishop takes Bishop takes Pawn takes and you cannot take back okay because I go Queen H4 check Queen E4 and I win the game firstly that's not true I'm going to show you how white can survive that and set up a nice little trap secondly white doesn't have to take this is a pawn sacrifice okay so uh in our game this is the position we reached my opponent played D5 and D5 isn't the optimal move after something like Knight F6 D E6 Queen D1 Rook D1 Bishop E6 uh black is okay uh instead what we're going to do is we're going to play Knight H3 and after Knight H3 White white has such a huge initiative that I believe black is practically very close to losing because one mistake could mean game over before I show you Knight H3 I want to show you what happens if white blunders F4 so we go for this check okay G3 can be played now if King somewhere uh then then black is actually winning but you can go G3 Queen E4 check Queen E2 okay if the Queens are traded off white is fine this is a bad Bishop so Queen takes rook and now Knight F3 and the queen is trapped after Knight F6 we Castle Queen side and this queen is going to be traded off uh for for the rook and all of White's pieces are good Black's pieces don't stand that well so in fact this position is equal white isn't losing after taking that pawn but the best way for white to play Knight H3 okay okay after Knight H3 White's best Black's best excuse me is E3 keeping the pawn on F3 E3 is the best move and after E3 something like Queen E2 picks the pawn uh back up and then castles Queen side and white doesn't the pawn down white just has a huge initiative the bishop pair and this bishop is bad so Bishop D2 this Pawn sacrifice in the fantasy is extremely extremely scary if after Knight H3 black takes then we take with the queen let's say queen H4 check just as a sample variation G3 the queen moves away we decline the queen trade let's say Knight E7 and castles Queen site for a pawn what did we get the bishop pair this bishop is buried Black's King is still stuck in the center the f file is open towards the black king D5 will mean that this bishop is open I mean practically this seems busted for black to me the engine only says plus point8 but it seems much much scarier than that okay and the final position is my favorite one and again extremely extremely scary uh it's from the tile variation of the advanced caran so again Bishop F5 H4 and if black plays H5 which is the main move we play Bishop D3 now this is sort of the main line line now so Bishop takes Queen takes e E6 and we go Bishop G5 now black has a way to stop now and not go into the craziness I'm about to show you by playing the move Bishop E7 or by playing Queen A5 Queen A6 which is something I've chosen to do in the past because I want to avoid well what you're going to see now but if black plays the most critical move Queen B6 then white gives up a pawn that firstly cannot be taken immediately white plays Knight D2 if if Queen takes B2 now then Rook B1 is already plus two queen A3 is the only move we trade queens and we play Rook takes B7 and black is just busted this is this Rook is too active this bishop is too active you can never go F6 you can never go Knight E7 you can never go Knight F6 it's just very close to being over like I said plus two according to the engine if on Knight D2 Queen A6 is played trying to trade Queens then which just go C4 and this is normal stuff strategically well known you go B3 decline the queen trade and play for the play against the weak king after Knight D2 if black knows what he's doing black plays C5 and I've personally witnessed a game between a fay master and an 1800 player where the 1800 player had the white pieces and crushed the FED master from this position and it went like this Main Line C4 now black takes Queen takes B2 Rook D1 you don't chase the queen away you Safeguard your position Knight C6 by Black Knight gf3 white just keeps bringing out more and more pieces black keeps moving the same pieces and keeps making threats and taking material so Knight B4 the queen goes to E2 CD4 another Pawn gone doesn't matter we Castle White is a pawn white is two pawns down but white has tremendous initiative again if you turned on the engine it's going to say 0.1 for white two pawns down that means that if black gives up uh a bit of material white will be much better or if black makes a mistake Black's King is in tremendous trouble the best move for black here is D3 by far the best move you can also go Rook C8 or you can take on A2 but it's already slightly worse let's say D3 is played which is the main move now Queen E3 Queen A3 preparing to move the Knight defending the pawn and now we go Rook B1 the idea is Rook B3 and you can see that all of these pieces are coming they are coming towards the king one sample variation which is what strong players would play is Knight H6 we take that uh Rook H6 is already winning for white according to the engine although for humans it's not easy to see why so let's say GH Rook B3 Queen takes on A2 we take on D5 Knight takes on D5 Queen takes on D3 this is all if if black knows what he's doing this is all pretty much forcing and these are the only moves for black that hold the equality if this is the best black can get look at the resulting position white is two pawns down but these two pawns are are Irrelevant this king is absurd it cannot Castle either way black is ready white is ready to double up the Rooks or get the other Rook to the C file and just infiltrate all over over the board as I said I don't go for Queen B6 anymore in this position because of that I'm too scared to do it even though I'm well prepared I'm too scared I I just I just don't go into this I go Queen A5 or I go Bishop E7 and the difficulty for this one I've given it nine out of 10 because it's really tough to navigate you can mess up so can black but you two can mess up yeah okay I I hope you liked the four mad attacking positions against the carakan I was being honest and I told you what I feared the most uh if you have anything to add if you play White and you go E4 tell me your antidotes to the caran I would like to learn more uh so yeah please share it in the comments below thank you for watching stay tuned for more chess bye-bye

Channel: Hanging Pawns

Views: 18,213

Keywords: Caro-Kann, how to beat the Caro-Kann, anti Caro-Kann, Caro-Kann ideas, Caro-Kann for white, Caro-Kann chess, black Caro-Kann, chess opening, chess opening theory, chess opening Caro-Kann, how to play the Caro-Kann, Caro-Kann theory, hanging pawns, how to attack the caro kann, carokann

Id: rdw_TpfN7bc

Length: 18min 48sec (1128 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 28 2023